Coffee Cup

Our speaker talked about The Web Starter pack...this is the most basic CoffeeCup pack they offer, which allows people to create awesome websites without needing to do any coding!!! Its a good option for many people who are just getting started in web design. For people with more experience, the The Web Designer pack is the next level up...CoffeeCup also offers is the E-commerce pack, which has the shopping cart designer and other programs that are suitable to develop e-commerce websites.

Something I found pretty cool about coffee cup is that the customers get unlimited life-time support through email, phone support and online forums! Usually you pay for that type of service nowadays.... !!!!

Web Usability

Just like web accessibility, web usability should definitely be a topic that a website developer should pay attention to. Some of the things that to keep in mind for usability are listed below:
1- Efficiency: The structure of the site should be efficient...
2-Task Flow: the flow is important as a usable site has a page flow that must match with the workflow.
3-Replication: It's ok to use templates!
4-Testing for usability: Testing early is very important within the design stage. A designer should not wait till the end to do this. HTML, Javascript should be tested for compatibility.
5-Motivation: The design for the website should meet the specific needs of the user. The design should motivate different types of users to specific parts of the site.
6-Track the traffic: Keep track of which page gets hit the most. Which page do people spend less time and click right onto the next page immediately? The site can be adjusted accordingly.

Webform Podcast

The Webform Podcast was very interesting in a sense that it makes you think differently about new tools that search engines offer and what people really think about them. Luke is an ex-yahoo employee and throughout the podcast he was comparing his experience at yahoo with googles new "google instant". Other innovations that Luke mentioned were categorized in three areas-for desktop: 1- Rich interactions 2- Input can come from anywhere -basically people spend more time off your site then on your site even though they are connected but they are still not in your site therefore things like calendar, browser extensions etc should be incorporated in the design 3- Taking advantage of work people have done elsewhere; there are many built out platforms and we can have access to that information. Another thing that was mentioned was the whole topic of pictures and uploading them to a profile...Pictures and contact information make collaboration more rich....For the most part people use fake avatars as place holders and this has no personal effect. We all know that uploading a picture is a pain. If u can capture from another account u are done-from yahoo, gmail or any other site! By asking people to upload a photo they tend to log out and the rate of visiting the site drops by 40%Ping was another topic of discussion. Apple launched an i-tune social network- and the photo had to be approved from apple.I also agree that Ping is the worst product from apple.As Luke mentioned, the digital product with ping is poor because: 1-Ping profile ignorant of anything you did in i-tunes2-You have to put in your photo that needs to be approved by apple3-Your name needs to be same as the credit card on i-tunes and no nicknames allowed.Ping is a social network for the i-tunes store and not for itunes.

Visually Impaired and Web Accessibility

A large percent of Internet surfers are visually impaired. These individuals can be blind, colour blind or not have the vision they once had. It is very important for their needs to be recognized as well.

The visually impaired also use the same online services such as online shopping, or online banking- Thus, websites and web applications need not to ignore this group of people when designing their sites.

There are many browsers that have been developed for people with disabilities. Among those are products with optical character recognition, screen magnifier, screen readers, voice recognition, speech synthesizers, etc.

An example of a site for the visually impaired:

Braillesurf :http://www.snv.jussieu.fr/inova/bs4/uk/

Macintosh Accessibility for the Visually Impaired

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qolDAUErfUk&feature=related

Use of Color on the Web

Use of color on the web is extremely important. Having the color palette for a site is crucial to brand your products or services and communicate with visitors. Even from a cultural standpoint, colors are interpreted vary from culture to culture. Choosing wrong colors can become a failure for websites!

Some key questions to keep in mind while trying to choose the right colors could be:

· Who are your site’s potential visitors?

· What are your products or services?

· What are your site’s key objectives?

I read in http://www.pallasweb.com/color.html that “If potential visitors come from a global or regional market, or exclusively from North America. Did you know that the color white symbolizes mourning in China, or that purple is the color of death in many Catholic countries? Yellow is an Imperial color in Chinese countries, but in America it may symbolize cowardliness or urine. More important, shifting colors to another area of the color spectrum can completely change their impact. For example, yellow shifted toward red results in a color that indicates gold or ‘having value.’” So it is important to keep the cultural piece in mind while picking out colors! I had never thought about it this way !

Text and background color selections do also affect readability, which can be an issue for visitors who are older those with visual impairments.

Check this site out for some great online color tools : http://bluefaqs.com/2009/11/25-online-color-tools-for-designers/

Sites built to Web Standards

The term web standards can mean diverse things to different people. For some, it is ‘table-free sites‘, for others it is ‘using valid code‘. However, web standards are much broader than that. A site built to web standards should adhere to standards (HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSLT, DOM, MathML, SVG etc) andpursue best practices (valid code, accessible code, semantically correct code, user-friendly URLs etc).
In other words, a site built to web standards should ideally be lean, clean, CSS-based, accessible, usable and search engine friendly.
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/articles/checklist/

Why do web standards matter?

There are numerous advantages to using web standards. Here are some highlights:

• Save $$$ (ease of maintenance): It is quick and easy to change unformatted content in HTML files which indicates that site changes take less time and eventually less money.

• Up to 60% Less Code! : Many websites that are built around Web Standards use up to 60% less code.

• Improved Search Engine Rankings

• Changing the layout is easier: When the site is designed with web standards in mind, site-wide changes become a lot easier. If a different color is needed for the site, all that needs to be done is to change one line of code in CSS. If you want your website to look good on mobile devices all that needs to be done is use CSS and your website will look good on mobile devices . Designing with web standards will give many more options to select from and will allow for swift and effortless site-wide changes.

• Accessibility: Vision impaired surfers may be using special web browsers. Using web standards makes it much easier to make content useable under special circumstance and also to the search engines.

What is Information Architecture?

Website structure, also sometimes referred to as information architecture, describes the logical flow of content on your site. A site that is well structured tends to focus on one overall major theme, and branch out from that theme into pages that are continually more focused, specific, and relevant to the overarching topic of the site.

For instance, a well architected website selling Caribbean cruises would branch into sub-topics (sub-directories and/or sub-menus) that flesh out the main theme. These sub-areas of the site might focus on specific Caribbean ports of call, cruise lines, specials / deals, thematic cruises, local culture, and anything else relevant to Caribbean cruises.
(Information above was located at http://www.ozonesem.com/search-engine-optimization/website-structure.html)


I have always wanted to know more about how the domain structure for multilingual sites are. Upon visiting some good sites, I figured that there are many ways to handle sites that are created in different languages for these countries. It looks like the best method however, is to create country specific TLDs with unique sites and content. Localization is critical and ensure that for instance the Spain site has language specific to Spain, not Chile! Another comparable method is to create sub-domains for each language version. Another not quite desirable, is to create a directory structure that serves each language. In all cases, web writers need to make sure of the name of the directories that use the language of the country being served.

Thankfully, Google Webmaster Tools now permit us to indicate the language preference for directories and sub-domains.
The first method, of course, has many benefits, which include the ability to validate the domain in Google Webmaster Tools and specify the geographic location. International TLDs will be indexed and listed in specific language versions of search engines and regional directories, while many sub-domains and directory localization strategies will not be indexed and listed such.
Small international sites should be served with a version selector for each country-specific domain. This assists with spidering and allows users to choose the version of the site they are interested in using.